


to long and seek after

by KIBITZER



Category: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni | Higurashi When They Cry
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Chie's backstory hits us like a freight train & Takano's like "what", F/F, Hanahaki Disease, I would sooner bury myself than Bury Your Gays, Not Actually Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 12:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11207652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KIBITZER/pseuds/KIBITZER
Summary: Unrequited love becomes the seeds from which brambles bloom. Hanahaki: a disease rooted in one-sided love, which sprouts in its host's lungs and eventually suffocates them. Surgery can remove the plant, but at a cost: removing the flower would irreversibly kill the feelings at its root as well.Takano Miyo is coughing up flower petals, and "unrequited" doesn't mean what she thinks it means.





	1. carnation

**Author's Note:**

> Because this one-man raft I call a ship needs its basic prompts filled, here's a hanahaki fic ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ  
> Higurashi spoilers through arc8 (though it doesn't get too deep into them)

She had assumed the scratch in her throat was merely the first sign of a cold, but now she knew better. This was something far more complex.

The first crumpled petal lodged in her throat after the schoolkids’ annual check-up. Alarm raced through her when she choked, but the foreign object passed through after only a few coughs, laying itself sweetly upon her tongue.

Takano stood frozen, one hand still upon the door she had closed, the other held open with the petal resting gingerly upon its palm. Brighter than blood, the fan-shaped petal tapered to a slender point at the bottom, and the crown of it was serrated like a knife. Her throat felt dry.

Her first instinct was to hide her sickness—Takano Miyo did _not_ fall ill. She didn’t have the medical journals in front of her, but she was certain she had read about this, that it was a disease. A less rational person might dismiss the notion of people spitting up flowers as nonsense, but after devoting herself to something as vehemently bizarre as Hinamizawa Syndrome, she knew better. This was a disease.

With the soft petal crushed inside one fist, she made her way down the corridor towards the offices, trying to ignore the building itch in her throat. Were there more? Blooming deep in her throat? She swallowed to kill the itch, but to no avail.

She coughed again, right outside Irie’s office, and cursed herself—another petal fell into her hand, and Irie had heard her. She barely had time to close her hand and hide the petal before the door opened and the doctor peered out at her.

“I was just seeing the kids off,” Takano said, before he had a chance to say anything. “We’re all set to close for the day.”

Irie smiled, and didn’t seem to notice the hand she held conspicuously behind her back. “Thank you. Giving everyone a checkup in the same day is pretty tiring, isn’t it?”

“Not particularly.” She shifted her weight, equal parts impatient and nervous. She cleared her throat. “Well—if you don’t need me for something, I’ll be going.”

“No, you’re good for the day,” Irie said. “Oh, I forgot—did you have a chance to ask Ms. Chie about setting aside time in the schedule for vaccinating the kids later this week?”

“No, I didn’t,” Takano said, and grit her teeth to hold back another cough. She rarely managed to steer Chie onto important topics; she was too bubbly, too bright. Though the two of them had known each other a while—almost as long as Takano had been in Hinamizawa—it was difficult to get a solid grasp on Chie. The two of them were like oil on water to one another, sliding off true understanding every time they spoke.

Takano decided to change the subject: “Flu season is back again, huh?”

A volley of coughs too powerful to suppress had her clamping one hand over her mouth, interrupting whatever reply Irie had started giving. Bright red petals burst free and landed inside her hand, and even in the middle of unrelenting coughs, she made sure none escaped her fingers.

“Are you coming down with something?” Irie asked mildly when the fit subsided.

She put on a dismissive smile, crumpling the new petals in her hand. “Just a cold. Nothing to worry about.”

* * *

 Even though Takano had promised Irie she would go see Chie the very next day, when morning came she barely felt well enough to sit up in bed, let alone leave the apartment. She awoke with her throat raw from coughing, every inch of her chest aching, and a halo of bright red flower petals covering her pillow.

Cursory research the night before had identified the damn frilly things as carnations. There must have been enough petals to make several flowers on her pillow alone.

The disease was accelerating at an alarming speed. Her own collection of medical texts had returned little worth noting, no matter how many times she tried searching them for any mention of flowers. Yet she remained certain, absolutely _convinced_ that she had heard of it before—but _where?_

Takano pulled herself out of bed, sloppily scooping up most of the flower petals and depositing them into the kitchen trash can. She made a cup of tea. Added honey, for the throat. She sipped it, and her tongue burned with the heat, and her chest burned with the effort of swallowing.

This was ridiculous. It had only been a day since the first petal appeared.

The full-body ache reminded her of influenza, but she didn’t feel feverish or nauseous—a blessing, really. Her throat and chest were tight, as if there was no room left in them to breathe anymore. Each breath she drew felt far too shallow, as if she could never breathe deeply enough to actually fill her lungs.

She decided to call in sick.

* * *

Irie had handled the vaccine scheduling himself in her absence, but she knew she was needed when it came to actually giving the shots. So, despite waking up in another heap of mangled carnations, she put on a brave face with her work uniform, and clocked in.

Her voice was beginning to suffer severely from all the coughing. Irie shot her a look that was more concerned than surprised. “Are you sure you’re okay, Takano?”

“Fine,” she groused, spitting red into a plastic cup she had nabbed from the water cooler earlier. “Just fine. Let’s get this done.”

Right on time, the entire student body of the Hinamizawa branch school filed into the waiting room, corralled by a chipper-as-usual Chie. She looked far taller among the kids than she actually was; if she stood next to Takano, there would be almost a head between them. Takano smiled, watching silently while Chie managed to arrange all of her students onto the chairs and sofas.

Takano had sent Irie off to the resting area to prepare juice and cookies, fully aware that he was mostly useless in the vaccination room. So, she hid her plastic cup behind her back and stepped out to greet the patients alone, putting on her most professional (and most healthy) smile.

“This will be quick,” she promised, to no one person in particular—maybe even to herself—and looked to Chie. “Ms. Chie, would you like to stay here, or—”

They did this every year, so Takano already knew what the response would be. “I’ll sit in with you,” Chie said quickly. Tucking a lock of bright blue hair behind one ear, she turned to the kids: “Nobody freak out, okay? I’ll be there with you the whole time.”

The younger kids were nervous, some holding onto each other for dear life as if an influenza vaccine was death in a vial. The older students were more relaxed, preoccupied with taunting one another with accusations of being scared, fighting over who would be the bravest when faced with the syringe.

Takano muffled a cough into her elbow, tasting the carnation petal that leapt from her throat into her mouth, but she kept her teeth clenched shut.

“We’ll do this like a conveyor belt, so no dilly-dallying,” she declared, discreetly tucking the petal away between her teeth and her cheek. “When Ms. Chie calls your name, you come into this room—” she pointed behind herself “—and get your shot. Then you can go have some juice and a cookie in the recovery area until everyone’s done.” She pointed the way again. “Who’s first?”

“I have an alphabetic list!” Chie announced, pulling a folded paper from her pocket as she stepped up to stand next to Takano. Shifting to ensure the cup stayed hidden, Takano threw a slanted look down at Chie to see if she had noticed. Fit for the mild weather, she was wearing a plain linen shirt and brown capris, showing tanned arms and ankles. Idly following the glint of a silver chain around her neck, Takano’s eyes caught a hint of the pendant at its end before Chie moved and her top concealed it.

The intrigue of the pendant pulled her attention away so thoroughly that she didn’t catch the name Chie called, but a child rose from her place on one of the sofas and approached. Blinking hard to clear her mind, Takano turned and led the way into the room she had prepared, placing the kid in a chair and Chie in another before perching on her own backless office chair.

“Are you nervous?” she asked, noting how the girl immediately reached to hold Chie’s hand. “That’s alright. It’ll only take a moment.”

She prepared the syringe with expert hands, barely needing to think about what she was doing as she twisted the needle into place and reached for the vaccine. She did all this behind the child’s chair, to avoid spooking her unnecessarily—even though to Takano, the small needle they used for the kids was about as intimidating as a kitten. 

Chie watched her draw the vaccine, and Takano felt the weight of her attention like an arrow pointed between her shoulder blades. She rolled her shoulders, trying to shake the unease, and pushed her chair back into the patient’s view. The instant the girl laid eyes on her again, she whimpered, gripping Chie’s hand tighter.

Takano left the comforting to Chie. She swabbed the injection site clean, grabbed the girl’s arm in a gentle but firm hold, and only paused for a second to look Chie’s way in the middle of it all.

The injection was done before the girl had time to escalate into full-on panic, and she seemed absolutely shocked at how fast and non-lethal the whole affair had been. With a ball of cotton taped over the tiny puncture in her skin, she went with Chie to the recovery area for her cookie, confused and relieved all at once.

That was how it went, with Chie doing most of the kid-care, letting Takano focus on her own work. She was comfortingly good-natured, and attuned enough to others’ thoughts that Takano only need look at her to convey requests. _Reassure this child, make this one look away, help me with this sleeve_ —Chie almost seemed a beat ahead sometimes, already helping before Takano had a chance to ask.

She did fine for a while, with just the mild displeasure of a scratchy throat. She managed to give seven more injections before the cough returned, surprising her midway through preparing the eighth syringe. Instinct made her drop the syringe for fear of being pricked, ensuring its fate to be trashed without ever being used.

After the first few coughs, she turned back with an apologetic smile, trying to ignore how teary her eyes had become. “Sorry, I—”

She was interrupted by another volley, this one so vicious it had her doubled over, holding her mouth with both hands as a dam for the petals that tore their way up from her lungs. And this time was different: this time, the insides of her hands were speckled by something hot and wet, a stark difference from the softness of flower petals.

Despite knowing that both Chie and the student in the chair were watching, she pulled her hands from her mouth, wheezing as the fit subsided. Bright red carnation petals fell from her fingers like snow, but she had to look, had to make sure the ice cold fear in her gut wasn’t an overreaction.

In between flowers, droplets of blood speckled her skin, like pinprick stars on the vast sky. The world swam before her eyes, and she blinked hard a few times, trying to re-orient herself.

Chie had to call her name several times before she even heard, and Takano looked up to see both teacher and student looking at her with vivid concern. The student—some new brat from out of town, Takano remembered—spoke first.

“Oh! Oh, shit, that’s hanahaki!” he sputtered, receiving a stern look from Chie and a reminder to watch his language that seemed more reflex than choice.

“Yes!” Takano croaked, feeling the puzzle pieces of memory clicking into place. That was its name! “You—” she was interrupted yet again, but managed to tame the coughing fit reasonably fast. “You know this thing, kiddo?”

That seemed to fluster him, but even as he fidgeted, Takano could only look at Chie, feeling a distinct burning shame at being found out—at being _sick._ “W-well, I’m not an expert, I just—it was more common, back where I used to live, is all.”

“And? What else?” her breath came ragged, but at least she was breathing somewhat freely again. The clog of petals had been cleared—for now.

“I-I don’t know! It was one of those gossipy things, they say it happens when…w-when you, uh—” He was blushing now, clearly uncomfortable, but Chie’s eyes were low and half-lidded, heavy with knowledge.

“When you love someone who doesn’t love you in return,” she finished, in a voice soft as velvet. She looked up, making direct eye contact with Takano. “Right?”

There were many reasons for that statement to send reasonable thought spinning away from her. What a cruel, bizarre disease. What sinister poetry. But, most importantly, above all else—what nonsense. She was not in love. She thought, if she was to suffer because of an unrequited romance, _she of all people_ should be aware of that romance in the first place.

“I don’t have anyone like that,” she said.

Chie didn’t reply; she just let the statement sit there, as if that would somehow transform it into a lie.

“How do I get rid of it?” Takano asked when nobody said anything. “I can’t keep—keep coughing up these—” as if on cue, more petals choked her. “—these _fucking—_ _”_ the shower of red petals scattered freely across the floor now that the secret was out.

Chie’s voice was still quiet, but it was the only thing Takano could hear over the thrum of her own body revolting against her. “You’re so far along…Hanahaki disease is fatal, isn’t it?”

 _That_ sent a cold spear through her, precisely parting her ribs and cleaving through her heart. Her work was not finished. She had so much to do. She had always been indifferent, even welcoming, to the idea of death—but at this precise moment, its embrace would be poorly timed. “No,” she said simply. “Hell no. No, no _no._ _”_

“Unless your feelings are requited—”

“I am _not_ dying over _this._ _”_

“—which will wilt the flower and heal you—”

“This is bullshit.”

“—or you have surgery to cut the flower out.”

She snapped that bit up and clung to it. “Surgery? Then it’s fixable. There’s no problem.”

Chie’s gaze pulled away from hers, studying the floor tiles with an intensity that spoke volumes. “Sure. I guess. Surgery can take the flower out of you. But it’ll take your feelings with it. You’ll never love that person again.”

“That’s fine,” Takano sputtered. “I don’t have anyone like that! How could it take feelings from me that I—that I don’t even _have?_ _”_

It was as though an iron wall came down then, shutting whatever dark thought Chie had been gnawing on off from Takano’s perception. She had been so close to dipping into the water, to understanding, but with a glance Chie turned her back to oil. Unable to sink in and understand, unable to have anything deeper than surface contact.

Chie grinned, dispelling the contemplative vulnerability that had reigned just a second before, and shrugged. “You’re right,” she said. “That doesn’t make any sense. You’ll be alright, Takano.”

Feeling like her throat had cleared up, Takano experimentally reached for the syringes again. When no coughing fit came, she twisted needle and syringe together, returning to the task at hand. She gave the boy—Maebara?—his shot without much fanfare and sent him out to his classmates.

Chie paused. She was supposed to call the next student, they both knew that, but neither of them said a word as the silence stretched. Finally: “Do you want me to sweep those up?”

It was obvious that she meant the petals, but it still took Takano a moment to jog her brain into responding. “I’ll do it,” she said, leaping to her feet and going for the dustpan. “No worries.”

“You should have told me you were sick,” Chie said once her back was turned. Takano froze in place, both confused and intrigued, waiting for more, an explanation, something.

Nothing came, so she shrugged. “That wouldn’t have made me healthy.”

“We could have rescheduled.”

Takano turned back around and started sweeping up the petals with a wry smile. “We can’t reschedule influenza season.”

Chie stood up, a sudden explosion of movement that had even Takano taking a step back. “You’re taking this seriously, right!?”

Takano muffled a cough with her fist and spat the petal into her plastic cup. “Sure. I’ll get the surgery done, cut this _plant_ out of me, and move on with my life—no big deal.”

“Takano, this is—it’s _deadly._ ”

She gave a hollow laugh, dumping the dustpan into the trash bin. “Come on. I’m only dying slightly faster than usual. Now I know what this is, I’ll have it fixed and be back in tip-top shape before you know it. Relax.”

“And your feelings?” Chie had closed both hands into fists at her sides, but now she put them both on her hips, fixing Takano with a stare that was almost accusatory.

Takano raised an eyebrow, replacing the dustpan to its usual spot before replying. “What _feelings?_ Like I said, I don’t—”

“That’s impossible!” another explosion, this time in sound. Where Takano usually found difficulty steering Chie to important subjects, now it seemed impossible to move her _away_ from one. “Please try to think. It doesn’t have to be romantic. Anyone you love who doesn’t love you back. Anyone.”

“Look,” Takano said, measuring out her words to ensure they didn’t come too acidic. “I’m glad you care enough to worry, but I honestly don’t have anyone like that.”

“I just want you to think about it. To figure out if losing your ability to care for that person is worth it.”

“If the alternative is letting a fucking plant kill me, then it’s already decided,” Takano shot back.

Chie shrugged. “If that’s how you feel.”

There was silence, again, and then, a tingling hint of a thought finally bloomed into a question across Takano’s lips. “Why are you so invested in this?”

Exhaling softly, Chie wiped her hands on her capris and turned away. She was headed to the door, no doubt to call in the next student and wrap this suddenly tense meeting up. “I had flowers in me too, once,” she said, still refusing to look Takano’s way. “Sometimes I wish I had let it kill me.”


	2. hydrangea

It was long since dark. Curled up in her bed, throat raw and chest aching, Takano found sleep a scarce resource. Even if the pain in her lungs hadn’t kept sleep at swordpoint, the question on her mind was too big to dismiss: what was the root of this disease? What neglected seed had found sustenance in her and flourished to kill?

Chie’s words rang in her mind even now. She had dismissed them outright when Chie spoke them, but now, in the quiet hours, they came back to haunt her.

_Anyone you love who doesn't love you back. Anyone. Is losing your ability to love them worth it?_

_I wish I had let it kill me._

Takano sighed and rolled over, squinting through the darkness at the clock on her nightstand. Almost three.

Chie hadn’t elaborated further. They hadn’t spoken about flowers again that day. Now, in the darkness, Takano wished she had asked more questions. She had never known any part of Chie’s past—now, the one bit she did know floated by itself, out of context, marred red with pain.

She coughed, and her mouth tasted copper again.

Slowly, she pushed herself up, feeling the overwhelming pressure of something lodged in her throat. She coughed, desperately vying for breath, heaving over her pillow—slowly, then all at once, the obstruction came free, in a shower of blood that spotted her pillow. It filled her mouth with petals and sweetness. A viscous strand of blood dangled from her lips, and she reached up to pull the flower from her mouth.

It was a whole head of carnation, still intact somehow after its journey. Its petals were warm and damp with blood.

She had planned on calling a doctor about it in the morning.

She was reconsidering her decision to wait that long.

* * *

 She had a diagnosis by morning. In the emergency room, she had been given painkillers and shots to regulate her hormone levels in hopes of soothing the ravenous flower. The hospital had called a specialist, who had announced her an extraordinary case—extraordinary, of course, in a bad way.

Her particular strain of the disease was progressing quickly—too quickly, far more quickly than was normal. She was told it could kill her by month’s end.

Her head was spinning, reeling, crumbling. She had urged the doctor on, urged him to tell her about the surgery, when it could be done and how she could prepare. He had said nothing, for a while; he simply looked through her results with stern, professional indifference.

In the end, he made his dark confession. “I don't know if surgery is a viable solution for you,” he said. “Usually, we would have more time.”

“But I-I came as soon as I—it's only been _days,_ it—”

“It's developing uniquely,” he said. “At its current stage, it's virtually identical to a typical stage four progression. That's when the whole heads start to appear,” he translated quickly. “We don't recommend surgery at this stage; it's too invasive. The roots are too deep by stage four.”

Her lips were numb, but she forced herself to speak. “And stage five is..?”

The doctor at least had the guts to look her in the eye. Perhaps he knew he was speaking to another professional; perhaps he was just a more direct person than most.

“Stage five is asphyxiation and death,” he said.

* * *

 The hospital wanted to keep her, to ensure her comfort. She declined, rather vehemently, and left; if she was dying, she was dying on her own terms, not shackled to a hospital bed. She called out of work again. Irie quietly reassured her that he would call a substitute to cover her duties.

Takano Miyo had always been fine with the idea of dying for her work. To devote both life and death to the Syndrome, and to her grandfather. Death did not scare her. She had long forgotten what fearing death was like—even as far back as the orphanage, she remembered: planning an escape, and imagining herself being the only one caught, imagining being killed for her friends’ freedom—and it had not scared her.

Dying for what she believed in seemed honorable. It was a welcome and suitable end to her story.

But this—dying from an unrelated disease, in less than a month, for no reason—this was _unacceptable._

It was far more infuriating than it was scary.

She couldn’t trust Irie to complete her work. That buffoon was too soft-hearted. Tomitake was out of the question—military boys without proper medical expertise had no place in her opus. Unaffiliated researchers would scoff and laugh at her, like so many times before. There was no one but her left in the world who could complete this work.

And she was dying.

Unfathomable.

She had resolved to not tell Irie and Tomitake, and she stuck by that decision. Their insipid pity would not help her.

But she wanted to talk to Chie. Chie, who knew this. Who had felt this. Who could—just maybe—for the first time in their lives—understand her.

The doctor had prescribed painkillers. She took as many as it was safe to take, drinking them down with water despite how it ached to swallow. She got dressed.

The pressure of flowers in her lungs was a constant now, hands pressed against her insides, testing how far they could push her before she broke. She coughed near constantly, and now, every petal brought drops of blood, leaving her lips stained red long after the carnations passed between them.

Bullshit. This was ridiculous.

The commute into Hinamizawa felt like it took an eternity, trapped in her car with blood in her mouth and flowers in her lap. She pulled up to the Hinamizawa branch school, vaguely aware of what time it was, and through a cloud of medicinal numbness she knew it would be about time for students to leave. Which meant, hopefully, she could discuss this in relative privacy.

As if she had teleported, she blinked and found herself in the hallway, headed towards the teacher’s office. Missing time—not an excellent sign. Maybe she should have left the painkillers alone and just put up with the pain. Maybe, just maybe, she shouldn’t have gotten here by her own car. An interesting idea. She knocked on the door.

The pleasantly neutral smile on Chie’s face dropped into a grimace of concern as soon as they made eye contact. Today, she was wearing a white dress with buttons in the front—no necklace.

Without saying anything—not even a greeting—she seized hold of Takano’s wrist and pulled her inside, forcing her down into a chair. Sitting down was nice.

“Are you alright?” Chie asked. “You look like you’re going to pass out. What are you _doing_ here? Wait, did you drive here like that? Oh my God, you _drove_ here.”

That was a lot. Takano cleared her throat, discreetly wiping both petal and blood off on her hand. “I wanted to talk to you,” she said. “About this disease.”

Chie laughed, crisp as chiming bells. _“You,_ a _nurse,_ coming to _me_ for medical advice!”

It _was_ funny, but there was no room left for laughter in Takano’s chest. “I don’t want to see anyone else,” she said. “You’re the only one who knows it.”

Chie pulled up her own chair and sat down, directly facing Takano, and now her face was grave. “This isn’t like you. …You’re dying, aren’t you?”

The fact that Chie said it first made it easier to admit. “Yes,” Takano said. “I can’t do the surgery. I’m dying.”

“Who is it?” Chie was staring at her, intently searching her eyes as if some grand revelation would come—but Takano only felt the same empty confusion as before.

She muffled a cough into her fist. “I’m not in love with anybody.”

Chie leaned back in her chair, turning away as if she couldn’t bear to look at Takano. For a mere instant, her gentle features were drawn into an expression of utmost agony the likes of which Takano had never seen. “Please,” she whispered. “You’re killing yourself over someone—literally. Just tell me who it is. Please.”

For once in her life, Takano had no idea what to say. She had been honest. She had racked her brain for half a week trying to think of what could have caused this, _who_ could have caused this, and had come up blank. She hadn’t even made the decision not to have surgery on her own—it, like most things in her lifetime, had been decided for her.

“Tell me you’re doing this out of love. That you think it’s worth it.”

Takano didn’t respond, resigned to silence when she realized Chie wouldn’t accept an honest answer.

After what felt like an eternity, Chie rose from her chair, smoothing imaginary creases from her white summer dress. Without a word, she walked around Takano and left the room.

The school building creaked around her as she sat in silence—an old building settling onto its foundations. Distantly, as if through a tunnel, she heard a commotion of laughing voices from the classroom—kids, playing games, enjoying their afternoon together. She coughed. Coughed again. She was getting used to the taste of blood, the feel of it crossing her tongue before she swallowed it down. She choked and spat until her hands were full of petals and half-formed heads of carnations. Luckily, none of them were as big as the one she had passed the night she was hospitalized.

The minutes blurred together in the syrupy haze of her painkillers. She had no idea how long she waited, but eventually, Chie returned. She pressed a colorful plastic cup into Takano’s hands and filled it with water. She placed the jug on her desk, perhaps a little harder than necessary, after filling her own glass.

There was a tight pinch to her lips, a crease in her brows, and Takano thought that this was not how it was supposed to be. Chie was—bright. Cheerful. At least, she always _looked_ it. Now, she just looked tired.

She didn’t sit back down. She sipped her water, standing half turned away from Takano, staring out the window. Takano didn’t know if she was supposed to say anything, so she decided not to, and obediently nipped at her water.

Finally, Chie sighed, and spoke. “My flowers were for my mother.”

Takano blinked, looking up from her cup. The afternoon sun was a golden glow on Chie’s skin, but its warmth failed to reach her eyes.

A faint smile curved her lips. “Blue hydrangeas. This was long before I moved to Hinamizawa.”

There was no reason for her to tell this story, and Takano wanted to ask her to stop, to beg her not to open her own heart to this kind of suffering. But Takano’s throat was raw, scraped up by a hundred thorns, and she only managed to breathe Chie’s name before her voice died out.

Chie heard, and looked her way, but didn’t stop. “I was just a teenager. I did everything I could to earn her praise, to be worthy of being loved. The day I realized that would never happen, the flowers started coming.”

“But you're alive,” Takano said. “Did she—your mother—”

The slam of Chie’s glass against the wood of her desk cut Takano off mid-sentence, startled into silence. She whipped around to face Takano, one hand grasping at the fabric of her dress. The snap fasteners on the front tore open with a series of sharp popping sounds, and she held the opening wide—and for every furious breath she drew, every heave of her chest, the scar down her sternum was a price she had paid. It extended from just a little lower than her collarbones and drew a sharp line down the center of her chest, trailing off where her dress closed, just below her bra. 

“No, Miyo! They broke into my body here—” One hand pressed against her sternum, then jerked away as if the scar had burned her. “I asked them to tear it apart, I had it cut out of me, and I regretted it, because every time I looked at her I couldn’t remember anymore why I had tried so hard. Why I had wanted her to care. I couldn’t remember what worth I saw in her. So I left, I moved away, and it took years before news of her death reached me—and by then, I had forgotten so much, I felt nothing.”

Chie breathed hard, as if the words themselves were exhausting to speak. Her head fell forward, a cascade of blue hair tumbling to rearrange itself to gravity’s draw, as if she couldn’t bear the weight of her own thoughts. “I couldn’t feel anything at all, even when they gave me her letters—ones she had written for me, but never had the courage to send. Letters about how sorry she was. Letters about how much she loved me. Letters saying goodbye.”

She reached for her glass and drank deep of the water, then finally sat, and got to work buttoning her dress again. She kept her eyes down, as if the buttons required her utmost focus, refusing to let Takano meet her gaze. She sniffed. “Hanahaki disease is not magic. It can’t know who in this universe loves who. It’s psychological. You’ve convinced yourself that someone you love doesn’t love you back.”

“That’s—”

Takano coughed, and the tear at her shredded windpipe cut through any amount of pain medication. She winced, her free hand scrabbling at her throat as if she could soothe the pain from outside. On foolish instinct, she brought the glass in her hand up to catch the petals, in some attempt to avoid soiling Chie’s office floor. Blood collided with water, turning her drink a foul yellow-brown—but the more she coughed, the more its color approached true red. Thick drops ran down her hands, staining her lap, and she felt something big building—like the sensation before vomit, but a thousand times more painful.

A whole head, its petals soaked with blood, landed in her glass. This one had a stem, only a couple of inches long, with wicked thorns along its length.

For a moment, she merely stared at it, before the feeling of something huge blocking her throat returned. There were more. She felt a hand upon her back, sometimes rubbing comforting circles along her shoulder blades, sometimes hitting her to help un-clog her throat. Bright red flowers tumbled across the office floor.

In the brief respite between two volleys, she clearly heard sobbing, but she didn’t know whose it was.

She loved someone, and that would kill her. That was a fact, now.

She looked up, and through the tears forced to her eyes by her fit, she saw bright blue looking back at her. Takano Miyo was not a person people fell in love with—she knew that. She didn’t fall in love, and she wasn’t worth loving, and those were facts, too; she had always known them.

But something about those facts was painful, on a higher level than the thorns and the blood. Something about them brought despair to her lips, a cry like a wounded animal, fated to die unloved. If she could stem the tide of blood and death by crying out for a taste of love, it should have stopped long ago. It had been decades since she had known love—decades more and she would be dead, her name would be long forgotten. That was how it would be. How it should be. She was not a thing worth loving.

She looked up, and through blood-tinted vision, she saw Chie sitting with her, crying with her, crying _for_ her. Seeing that surprised her—no one should have to cry for Takano Miyo.

The carnations tasted sweet and smelled intoxicating, even as they snared her life in their thorns and squeezed the breath from her lungs.


	3. chrysanthemum

Parting her eyelids was like prying open the crust of the earth with bare hands—a task much too large for a mere mortal. Awakening felt like emerging from the bottom of a crushing ocean, miles and miles left to go before she would see sunlight, like being pulled from Hell itself by thousands of merciless hands.

Takano Miyo drew breath, and it hurt, and it was a pathetic whistle through clogged lungs, but she breathed.

She was in a soft place, warm, safe. Though her eyes were closed, the darkness inside her eyelids wasn’t as scary as usual. It was comforting, in a way. Heavy. Reassuring. She breathed.

The flowers were still there. Her mouth tasted bitterly of blood. Her lungs ached with every breath, as each contraction forced thorns up against them, scraping at her insides.

Takano heard a door closing, and slowly, she forced her eyes open, squinting against the world. The room was spinning as soon as she did, and she closed her eyes again, blinking hard to try and clear her vision. When she cracked her eyelids open again, she saw a tidy but unfamiliar room—white walls decorated with colorful pictures in frames, a dresser with a row of books meticulously lined on top, a nightstand with a large glass of water. She was in a bed, gray plaid sheets stained with drops of her blood. By the bedside was a chair with a paperback book in the seat.

Takano frowned, squinted, and sat up. She was dizzy and parched, and immediately reached for the water, taking greedy gulps that had her body aching angrily at her for swallowing. She ignored it—she drank it all, washing the taste of blood from her mouth at last.

It was late. There was a window, and though the curtains were drawn, Takano could tell no sunlight was trying to force its way in. She blinked hard, rubbing her eyes in some effort to feel awake, but she suspected it would be futile with death looming so near.

She heard footsteps, and the door handle moved. Hesitantly, the door opened, and Chie poked her head into the room. In the dim light, her hair seemed darker than normal, a deep ocean blue to get lost in. For a second, it looked as though she might rush in, but she jerked back and contained it. “You’re awake,” she said, in carefully measured tones.

Takano cleared her throat, trying to work her exhausted voice. “So it seems,” she said. “Where—?”

“My apartment,” Chie said, closing the door behind her and opening her arms in a half-hearted gesture of grandiosity. “Welcome. How do you feel?”

“Like I should already be dead,” Takano said. “Why am I here?”

“I couldn’t just leave you at _school,_ _”_ Chie huffed, taking a seat in the chair next to the bed. “I called Irie to help me, and we agreed—well, basically, I convinced him I could handle it.”

“So he knows I’m sick,” Takano said, lamenting for a bizarre moment her reputation. “But I’m glad you…stopped him having any further involvement.”

Chie smiled, canting her head slightly as if Takano had said something strange. “You and I rarely have deep conversations, but even I know you don’t like people prying into your business. I just thought the less people around you, the better.”

“Very correct.” Takano laid back down, slowly, and her constant ache softened if only slightly. “You…Thank you.”

Out of all the expressions she had expected to see, she hadn’t thought Chie would respond with sadness. Her eyes were rimmed with red, Takano realized, puffy from crying. The realization hurt almost as much as her own shredded throat.

“You’re sad,” Takano observed. “Why—?”

“Are you stupid?” Chie asked, her tone straddling the line between incredulous and overwrought. “You’re dying.”

Knowing she was being difficult but not caring, Takano said: _“And?”_

Chie was silent for a long moment, her eyes wide and searching, as if she was trying to gauge whether or not Takano was trying to prank her. “Stupid. You’re stupid. Tell me you’re not serious.”

“I’ve never been scared of dying,” Takano said, and while that was true, the nagging inconvenience of this still bothered her. She pushed that aside for now, inhaling deeply to soothe the sting of failure. “I don’t see why you should be upset on my behalf.”

Surprisingly, Chie started laughing—a laugh laced deeply with sheer disbelief. She covered her eyes with one hand, laughing until she shook, laughing until Takano realized she had transitioned into crying. “Takano Miyo, you are—” she had to pause, catch her breath between sobs— “the single most brilliant woman I’ve met—and at the same time, you’re the dumbest idiot, _ever._ _”_

As she spoke, she was interrupted by both laughter and sobs, unable to keep a lid on the multitude of emotions welling up in her. “You don’t even understand why I’d be sad if you died?”

“Well, I _was_ just…being difficult,” Takano said, feeling like she was being made fun of. She didn’t like that feeling. She squirmed, trying to row the conversation back to safe shore. “I-I don’t know, I—I guess it’s…normal.”

“This is just perfect,” Chie laughed, sounding like she was moments away from a full-scale meltdown. “I spend all this time losing my fucking _mind_ over you, and you don’t even—don’t even think I want—don’t even think I care if you’re _alive._ _”_

Takano coughed pitifully, but her cheeks were hot now, shame she didn’t even understand welling up in her. She felt like she was being made fun of, and she felt stupid, but she didn’t even know why. Petals stuck to the inside of her mouth, pressed against the roof of her mouth.

“Then explain it to me,” she demanded weakly. “If you’re _so smart._ _”_

“Oh, you’re doing far better than this afternoon,” Chie remarked. “If you have the energy to get salty.”

“Alright, this is just antagonizing me,” Takano wheezed, sitting up so suddenly Chie jumped back in her chair to avoid a collision. She brushed her hair back, trying for some measure of credibility—as if it would help her look more presentable when she was covered in flowers and blood—and put on her most serious face. “What am I missing here?”

Directly face to face, Chie wavered, looking flushed. Her eyes flickered away three times before she was able to make solid eye contact. “I didn’t mean to taunt you,” she said, with a small apologetic smile. “I just thought you would already be aware of how easily people fall in love with you.” A pause, where it seemed she might look away, but she simply sighed instead. “How easily I fell in love with you.”

The profoundly unlovable Takano Miyo did not have an answer to that. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, unsuccessful attempts at making a sound, a reply, anything. The eternally hated Takano Miyo felt a rush of blood to the head, knowing she was going deep red, unable to formulate a coherent response.

“But here you are, dying for love—for someone else—so I didn’t want to say it. I thought you must already know. It would be…unnecessary, to bring it up, I thought.”

 Takano’s unlovable train of thought was stalled at first station. “You’re in—you _love—_ _”_

“I love you.”

So outright, so earnest. There was the Chie Rumiko she knew.

In all her life, Takano had never entertained the idea of romance—had never wasted time imagining a relationship with someone, what it would be like, what they would do together. There was no time. There was no _point._ She wasn’t built for love, or happiness, or living at all. She had been at peace with death and loneliness.

In one terrifying instant, she imagined, dared to imagine, what it could be like—to hold Chie’s hand, to have dinner together, to talk with her for hours, to kiss her. In one horrific prolonged moment, she imagined the warmth of equally returned love, and when she looked at Chie, the very idea of it lanced through her like a red-hot knife.

It tore at her heart, and all the brambles in her chest shuddered at once, and she was convinced that this was it, this was the last breath she would draw. She felt thorns lodged in her windpipe, a million flowers blooming madly in her lungs, and she was absolutely convinced this was the end of her loveless life.

She had been wrong about that before. She was wrong this time too. It was a kiss that stole the air from her lungs, not death—she was holding Chie’s face in her hands, feeling the drum of her heart pressed against herself, and she didn’t know who had initiated it—Chie was holding onto her just as tightly, fingers digging into Takano’s arms. Even when they parted, Chie’s eyes remained closed, as if opening them would reduce the moment to mere illusion.

“Who is it, Miyo?” Chie whispered, her breath hot against Takano’s mouth. “I want to know who you’re dying for. I want to know that it was worth it.”

Takano shook her head. “I don’t…I think it might be you.”

Blue eyes snapped open, fixing her with an incredulous stare. “Missing the part where I’m in love with you.”

“It isn’t magic,” Takano said, echoing Chie’s own words. “It’s psychological. I…I think it’s you, Chie.”

“I can’t believe I taught Takano Miyo something,” Chie mumbled, looking down, far more bashful now than she had been. “And I said all that stuff, I shouted at you, ‘cause I got so upset that you were dying for someone else…”

Takano was about to reassure her when she coughed, turning away to avoid doing it right in Chie’s face. A few petals settled on her palm. A now-familiar pressure set alarm bells off in her head: a big one was coming. She looked up, trying to warn Chie, or _something,_ but only thorned flower stems rose from her throat. She choked and wheezed, and Chie’s hand was there on her back once again, and her other hand was gripping Takano’s.

The carnation that dislodged from her throat was whole, with a rose’s thorny stem. The leaves were perfectly formed, a beautiful specimen despite its origin, and no petals followed it. Takano cleared her throat a few times, gripping the carnation in one hand and refusing to let go of Chie’s hand with the other.

“Is this the last one?” Chie asked quietly. “Do you understand now? That this isn’t unrequited—that it never was?”

“I thought I could never be loved.” The carnation’s head was so fragile in her hand. She could crumple it within moments—all she had to do was close her hand. “I had decided love was impossible—so I didn’t even realize when I fell in love with you.”

Carefully, Chie pried the red flower from her hand, depositing it in the empty cup on the nightstand. That was the root of love, finally fulfilled, and with its passing, Takano thought she could breathe just a little easier. The plant was wilting, releasing her from its snare, in slight measures with each breath she drew.

“You really are stupid.” Chie smiled, turning back to press her forehead against Takano’s. “I love you. Do you believe me?” She smelled like honey, sweet and mild, and in one moment of dark comedy, Takano was grateful that Chie didn’t use a flower-scented shampoo.

“I do,” Takano said, drawing a full breath for the first time in days. “Yeah, I do.”


End file.
